


Favorite Record

by smallerontheoutside (theinvisiblequestion)



Series: Playlist [12]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Boy Band, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 21:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3426863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisiblequestion/pseuds/smallerontheoutside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke and Bellamy go on a road trip.</p><p>(Inspired by Fall Out Boy's song of the same name.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Favorite Record

Clarke’s stretched out upside down on Bellamy’s bed, hanging off the foot of the mattress in front of the oscillating fan. Even dressed in nothing but her cotton underwear and a sports bra, the summer afternoon is oppressive. “Why is it so _hot_?” she whines.

Bellamy’s been walking around the apartment for the last half an hour and Clarke doesn’t know how he can stand exerting any extra energy in this godforsaken heat. “Because the tilt of the Earth’s axis—“

Clarke groans. “Shut _up_ , you fucking nerd.”

Bellamy laughs and kisses Clarke’s chin. “You wanna go for a drive?” he asks.

“Where?”

He just smiles.

Clarke looks at him for a moment, then shrugs. “Sure.”

He throws one of his t-shirts at her, and she puts it and her shorts on. She figures out then what he’s been doing walking around the apartment: he’s been packing stuff for the drive. He grabs his backpack, hands her a little cooler, and then grabs her hand and drags her down the stairs and out to his truck.

The air conditioner is broken, but they roll the windows down and turn the radio up and once they get out on the highway it’s not so bad. They drive for hours, talking and singing and dancing in their seats and laughing. Bellamy drives along the highway until the sun goes down, and then he turns onto a different highway and keeps driving. The night air cools quickly, and before long they roll up the windows and Clarke moves to the middle seat so she can lean against Bellamy while he drives.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Somewhere. You’ll see.” He kisses the top of her head.

“Hint?”

“Nope.”

“Aw, come on, you’re no fun.”

He laughs and drapes an arm around her.

They stop for a late dinner in a tiny town in the foothills, and Bellamy digs a blanket out from behind the seat before he keeps driving. Clarke begs him to tell her where they’re going, but he is resolute.

“Take a nap, princess. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

She snorts. “Not a chance.”

“Alright, have it your way.”

She stares at the darkness outside the truck—it’s mostly trees, and hills, and rocks so she’s not missing much in the dark—and marvels at how different it is this time. It’s far from perfect, of course, because her mother is convinced that Clarke making the biggest mistake of her life, and because Bellamy is too good at saying _almost_ the right thing and Clarke is too good at stewing silently in her ire. But it’s good and real and comes with all kinds of strings, good ones and bad ones. She no longer leaves in the middle of the night, but he complains about her snoring. He plans dates and gives her little gifts, but she forgets that underneath his easy smile is a big, soft heart.

He finally pulls off the highway onto a beat-up old service road and parks in pitch darkness. He’s prepared, though. He pulls out a big battery-powered lantern and an old sleeping bag and tells her to bring the blanket. He leads her on a worn trail through the brush and trees into a clearing. She can hear a stream nearby, and it smells like grass and dirt and pine trees out here. He spreads out the sleeping bag and pulls Clarke down onto it, and when he turns off the lantern, she can see _all_ the stars.

“There’s so many,” she breathes. She’s seen the night sky before with stars in it, when she goes to her parents’ vacation house near the beach, but there were never this many stars. Out here, she can see why they call their galaxy the Milky Way. She curls up on Bellamy and he settles the blanket over both of them.

He points up at the sky. “You see that cluster there? The Pleiades, they’re called. The Seven Sisters. The Greeks believed they were the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. And over there, you see that sort of sideways-W shape?”

“Yeah.”

“Cassiopeia. She was Queen of Ethiopia until she got too high-and-mighty about how pretty she was and Perseus sent a monster to eat her family.”

“It’s a W in the sky,” Clarke says. “It doesn’t even look like a person. People don’t bend that way.”

Bellamy laughs. “They’re myths, Clarke.”

“They’re _crazy_.” There’s a streak of light then, brief but unmistakable, right across the middle of Cassiopeia. “Did you see that?”

Bellamy nods.

Another streak, this one longer, slices through the Milky Way near the Sisters. Clarke points up at it, and Bellamy catches her hand. He holds it down against his chest, and as Clarke stares at the sky, there’s shooting star after shooting star and— “It’s a meteor shower,” she says.

He chuckles. “You think I drove all the way out here for regular stars?”

Clarke kisses his rough, stubbly jaw. “I’ve never seen a meteor shower,” she says, watching bits of rock burn across the sky. “Well, not like this. They don’t look the same in the city.” When the shower dies down to an occasional straggler here and there, Clarke shifts and looks at Bellamy. “Does this mean we get a whole bunch of wishes, or just one big wish?”

“Whatever you want, princess.”

“Mm…” She thinks about what she’d wish for, and discovers she doesn’t really want to wish for anything. “Nah, I’m good. What about you?”

He trails a hand over her arm. “Mm, I can’t tell you, or it won’t come true.”

(He tells her eventually, years later, when he is blissfully, perfectly, incandescently happy, over the sound of a pair of healthy little lungs.)

**Author's Note:**

> It's done. It's over. That's it. That's the last track. (Except for the bonus track.)
> 
> Feel free to start over, though. :)


End file.
